A revolving Ferris Wheel created on Objet multi-material 3D printer

Dec.18, 2012

Objet shared a nice video today, a revolving 3d printed Ferris Wheel made on an Objet Connex500 multi-material 3D printer. It uses rigid white, rigid black and grey digital material combination which is created by mixing black and white. It consists of a rotating upright wheel with passenger cars attached. The whole Ferris wheel, including all the parts was 3D printed as a single block covered with supporting material. When the printing finish, the supporting material was then washed away with waterjet.

The ferris wheel in this video came out of the 3D printer as a fully assembled mechanism, with independently attached carts. 3D printing is the only technology in the world able to manufacture finished assemblies like this one without the need for a production line or sequential assembly steps. The Objet Connex 3D printer is able to selectively place different material colors and properties to different parts of the 3D printed model. In this case, the machine uses rigid white and rigid black material, and also combines those materials on the fly to enable the user to create various gray shades.